ANAHEIM — The players wage their battle for two points over 60 minutes. Sometimes up to 65 and if that’s not enough, there’s that you-against-the-goalie duel. Then they peel off their drenched equipment, fit in a postgame ride on the exercise bike, have a quick shower and go home.

The coaching staff commiserates in an area within the bowels of Honda Center. Maybe do a quick review of the game. Win or lose, they might lament what could have been done differently in this situation or that one. Set the plan for the next day. And then they head home.

By the time Joe Piscotty makes his exit, the arena is virtually empty. The Ducks might have ended their game hours ago but his day-long shift was only hitting the homestretch. As their video coach, he’s got to get the information ready for who wants it, whether it’s the players or Randy Carlyle, their bench boss.

“It varies,” Piscotty said. “I’m sending out shifts for the players. I start going through the game again to kind of get ready for the morning as far as areas where we performed well. Maybe some areas that we need to improve on. Some tendencies that are maybe creeping into the game one way or another and kind of put some stuff together for individual players.

“We’ll have individual player meetings usually the next day. I’ll meet with a few guys. You’re just kind of going through the odds and ends. I’ll put goalie clips together for Sudsie (goaltending coach Sudarshan Maharaj) so he can go through how our goalie did that night. Just all the kind of busy work adds up.”

Game day or not, Piscotty’s usually begins around 6:45 a.m. Maybe 7 a.m. if he dares to fit in a few extra winks. “It is what it is,” he said, smiling. “You’re the first one in, last one to leave usually. There’s a lot of stuff to do.”

His work is essential. Critical. The importance of his role has increased ten-fold over the years. Preparing video goes well beyond scouting the next opponent or reviewing the most recent game. The technology that’s used now makes the days of filming with a camcorder seem prehistoric.

Visual evidence of a player’s performance can be instantly accessed and studied frame by frame, breaking down what was done right and wrong among the myriad of situations that occur. And with the NHL instituting a coach’s challenge to question scoring plays, it puts Piscotty right on the front line.

That wasn’t part of the job description when Piscotty joined the Ducks seven years ago.

“The video review now is part of the responsibility of the individual that’s inside on the computer, dissecting,” Ducks coach Randy Carlyle said. “Because they’re responsible for making the call on do we challenge or not challenge.

“You ask for their opinion and then you have that short time frame to make the call if you’re going to do it or not. And then there’s always the supplying of the iPads, all of that is more inclusive now. There’s more technology available.”

Video review and the coach’s challenge has “amped up the pressure” in Piscotty’s eyes. The right call to have an opponent’s goal nullified because it went offside on the scoring play or interfered with the goaltender can make the difference in a game. At the least, it might affect how the team plays the rest of the game.

The wrong call can do damage. If a coach’s challenge for offside is not successful, he loses the one timeout he has. Carlyle said there is a criteria they have to meet to issue one but Piscotty has to be quick and definitive with his opinion.

“I look at it as it’s on my shoulders to make sure that I’m making the right call,” Piscotty said. “Usually it comes down to (the coaches asking), ‘Joe, what do you want to do? Now with the addition of a penalty being called on the offside, if you get it wrong, it puts a little bit more pressure on you for sure.

“Personally, I actually like that. I like the pressure. I like to have a stake in the game, so to speak. It’s actually been somewhat enjoyable for me.”

All of this takes seconds. Officials want to move the game along. Ducks center Antoine Vermette sees how intense that moment can be for Piscotty, an Orange County native whose attraction to hockey took root as a youngster watching Wayne Gretzky and the Kings play for the Stanley Cup in 1993.

“You can only guess what’s going on,” Vermette said. “Sometimes you can hear the coaches ask for certain things and obviously in the heat of the game, sometimes it has to be quick. I’m sure he’s feeling some heat down there.”

Said Piscotty: “There’s a burning sensation all over your body.”

From the coaches’ room, Piscotty said he has up to four screens at his disposal during a game. He’s tracking everything – how the Ducks are breaking out of their own zone, how effective their forecheck is in the opposition’s end. Where their forwards are positioned in the neutral zone.

If something needs to be corrected, he’s on his headset talking with assistant coaches Steve Konowalchuk on the bench and Mark Morrison and Rich Preston upstairs. “Different breakdowns,” Piscotty said. “Anything. Positive things.”

“Obviously they have a certain view on the ice,” he continued. “There’s a certain view from the sky and there’s a certain view from a TV screen. So you kind of get all angles covered. You go back and forth. What did you see here?

“I have a different perspective. They have a different perspective. We have, I believe, a pretty good process as far as how the communication goes.”

It wasn’t always this efficient. Veteran goaltender Ryan Miller thought back to when he broke in at the new millennium and “it was like you had eight VHS machines stacked on top of each other in the coach’s room.” Putting specific video packages together took two hours, maybe more. Coaches often had to do it themselves. Help was occasionally needed from someone more video-savvy.

Technological advancements soon had teams employing “a full-time video guy,” as Miller noted. Naturally, the Ducks and every other pro team are in the computer age and software has made it so players can instantly see themselves in whatever situation they choose.

Piscotty runs his through Sportscode, which is focused on performance analytics that can be tailored to a team’s desired metrics. It can be accessed through any computer or mobile device. And Miller, as studious about his position as there is, sees great value in it and the man who runs it for them.

“It sort of went from we just need somebody to put this video together to you need somebody that knows the game well enough so that they can code the game and realize what situations we’re going to want to see in between periods,” Miller said. “It’s pretty amazing.

“It’s a handy tool for sure. I go to Joe before every game and I want to see the shootouts from around the league. And we have that technology, which is amazing that we can make everything call up on demand.”

Adds Carlyle: “And players are sponges. They want to see themselves. They want to see the proof to verify if it’s positively or negatively. Again, it’s a bigger responsibility for the person in that chair now for sure.”

At 35, Piscotty arrived at his job with a playing background that was limited to some club roller hockey and ice hockey in Huntington Beach. His desire to play goaltender – Patrick Roy’s performance for Montreal won him over in that ’93 Cup Final – ended after letting six shots get by him in two periods.

Business and sports management became his real-world goals but the love of hockey never left him. While pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Michigan, Piscotty worked as a graduate student manager under legendary men’s coach Red Berenson.

One of their conversations revolved around Piscotty looking at a career in law and Berenson simply asking him if he wanted to be in that profession the rest of his life if a path in hockey didn’t work out. “So I decided to get my MBA,” Piscotty said.

It was at the University of Denver where he made a connection with the Ducks. George Gwozdecky, then the men’s hockey coach, was a roommate with David McNab, the Ducks’ senior vice president of hockey operations, when the two played at Wisconsin and got him an interview with the longtime executive.

Now he’s in a position that he hopes leads to something greater. The long hours are tough on a young family at home but Piscotty said he has a great support system. “My wife (Carrie) is unbelievable,” he said.

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It has allowed him to dig into an ever-evolving position that has grown in importance, and he can build relationships with players and have an impact on them, however small or large.

“That’s one of those things where you sit down with a guy and you show him a couple of things,” Piscotty said. “And then you see them execute it on the ice that night. You’re thinking that what I say has meaning and it is making a difference. Yeah, it’s very rewarding.”

In that sense, Piscotty sees himself as much more than a so-called video guy. He feels like a valued member of the coaching staff.

“They’re definitely a part of the team more than ever,” Vermette said.